I guess that the Clegg wanted the Liberal Democrats to get into government to try to introduce a fair voting system, and was forced to drop the manifesto commitment on fees, being prevented from opposing the Tory policy as a condition of joining with them. Of course, the Conservatives could see that all the other parties would do their utmost to preserve the existing system which benefits them greatly, so were not worried about having a referendum on voting, especially as they could present an alternative as being too difficult to understand. Furthermore, although having the Liberals in government restrained the Tories from introducing the harsh measures which they really wanted, the Conservatives were glad to take all the credit for this, while emphasising the one Liberal policy reversal that they had compelled. Presumably Clegg was told he'd have to vote for fees to be accepted as deputy premier, and would not be surprised if the Conservatives had calculated that this would destroy the credibility of the Liberal party.

Exit poll suggests that Labour + LibDems + SNP + Green is very similar to Tories. Last time it slightly underestimated the Tories' vote. It could be tight, which itself is much more than most people expected.

- How big will the Tory landslide be?
- Lib Dem surge? (South-west results will be interesting)
- UKIP collapse?
- Labour collapse?
- How much will the 'left' split between Labour/Lib Dems? How many seats will the Tories take off that?
- How fatigued are voters? (4 consecutive years of big votes in Scotland - IndyRef, GE, referendum, GE...)
- Will Corbyn resign after the election?

While it was quite pleasing to see Theresa May and the Tories doing far worse than they expected and thoroughly embarrassing themselves, when it comes down to it, the Tories are still in government, and so not much has really changed. And while they will have to be a bit more careful about their legislation because they will have less chance of just forcing through anything, it's still going to be largely business as usual.

And this is disappointing, especially as there was a time last night when according to the Betfair odds, Jeremy Corbyn was more likely to be Prime Minister after the election than Theresa May.

Just imagine what might have happened without the media bias against Corbyn and the absolute shambles that was the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) after he was elected as Labour leader. I'm not saying this as a Corbyn fanboy - I didn't even vote Labour - but the whole thing was a car crash from the the PLP. Really unprofessional.

I'm actually quite cool with the outcome. It's not ideal, in that the Conservatives are still the largest party and are still in charge, but other than that pretty much everything went the way I would have wanted. I freely admit to being a Corbyn fanboy and I'm really gratified that - despite the best efforts of 90% of the media and 80% of his own MPs - he's increased Labour vote share and seats. Right up until the exit poll was announced, the received wisdom was that Jeremy Corbyn was going to be a disaster for Labour, they would be wiped out, nobody would vote for his policies, etc. etc. But the opposite has happened, and hopefully this means that the rest of the PLP are going to finally be persuaded to get behind him.

Plus Teresa May has been badly weakened and has (for no good reason) put the Conservative Party into a very difficult position: minority government or government propped up by the DUP (which simply won't wash with the liberal wing of the party). I give it six months.

Yep, lots of positives to be had from this result, I think. Time will tell, of course.

I'm actually quite cool with the outcome. It's not ideal, in that the Conservatives are still the largest party and are still in charge, but other than that pretty much everything went the way I would have wanted. I freely admit to being a Corbyn fanboy and I'm really gratified that - despite the best efforts of 90% of the media and 80% of his own MPs - he's increased Labour vote share and seats. Right up until the exit poll was announced, the received wisdom was that Jeremy Corbyn was going to be a disaster for Labour, they would be wiped out, nobody would vote for his policies, etc. etc. But the opposite has happened, and hopefully this means that the rest of the PLP are going to finally be persuaded to get behind him.

Plus Teresa May has been badly weakened and has (for no good reason) put the Conservative Party into a very difficult position: minority government or government propped up by the DUP (which simply won't wash with the liberal wing of the party). I give it six months.

Yep, lots of positives to be had from this result, I think. Time will tell, of course.

I think the main positive is that it's likely to be less than five years to wait for the next election (Fixed Term Parliament Act? What's that?), and hopefully it will be the Tories that are seen to be in disarray in the meantime rather than Labour. So the next election might hopefully have a better outcome. But a lot will happen before that, so there's no point in getting too excited.

But I suppose my earlier point was that a lot of the positives come from being able to laugh at the Tories and Theresa May and the people who said that Labour would lose a load of seats, rather than anything tangible.

One other good thing about this result is that hung parliaments give extra weight to the argument for proportional representation. Out of the last three elections, we've had two hung parliaments and one near miss. The main argument people use for wanting to keep First Past the Post is that it gives majority single-party governments. Well, not from where I'm sitting!

I don't know what's wrong with people in this country. Why does everyone want another election? After all, we've now got the most strong and stable government this country has ever had, the economy is booming (apart from the fact sterling crashed to its knees when the exit poll was announced), brexit is going smoothly along, the Prime Minister is as popular as ever, everyone's getting on, and we've got a wonderful future to look forward to.
We should just settle down and put our feet up for 5 years now and let things just simply flow into place. After all, it's not as if we're in crisis is it?